C&C 3 Tiberium Wars: Previews

"Outside of their look, the aliens bring other differences to the table compared to GDI and NOD. The most important of these differences is likely how they deal with economy. Not only are they granted a bonus that means they're granted more credit for tiberium collected than the other factions, but they also don't need to build silos to hold the stuff. This allows the aliens to build up huge amounts of money at a time to build up their forces..."

"The aliens (also known as "the invaders" to the GDI and "the visitors" to Nod) are perhaps most intriguing faction in the game for experienced strategy players, because with the right strategy and build order, they can mount a quick and continuous offense. However, this style of play will require some micromanagement--shuffling around individual units rather than simply commanding large groups--to work at its best..."

"For example, Billy Dee Williams plays a politician thrust onto the world stage during the ultimate crisis, a man who must wrestle with deep insecurities and character flaws that become increasingly visible as the pressure on him mounts. Josh Holloway plays an elite military planner who has never actually confronted the death and destruction resulting from the very operations he plans; when he is forced to come face to face with the horrors of war, he gains a new level of empathy and understanding that leads to a character defining moment..."

"GFW: What new stuff are we going to see from Kane in this installment of Command & Conquer?
Joe Kucan: A lot of tap dancing, actually. This version, because [C&C3 Executive Producer] Mike Verdu insisted on it, is actually a musical. A lot of people don't know that. Some of the solo numbers I do... oh man, Kane is a great tap dancer. A lot of people are going to be surprised..."

"Most GDI players prefer solid head-on tactics that overwhelm the enemy. Very often GDI players will build a strong economy supporting a well-defended base. Offensive forays include massive armor forces and tank rushes that can smash anything in their path, with orca scout aircraft deployed to take out choice targets. The need for flanking and retreating is somewhat diminished by the heavy armor of the vehicles, but this comes at the cost of speed. Who has time to worry about that stuff anyway? Let the Nod raider buggies do donuts in the desert while GDI tanks roll directly into their base!"

"In addition to the new multiplayer modes described above, we will also be implementing support for the Xbox 360 vision camera. This is a cool new video chat system that launched on Xbox 360 in September. You'll be able to look into the eyes of your opponents before a match--in the game lobby--and then see and talk to them as you are playing the game itself..."

"So how does our new UI work? At its core, it consists of a traditional C&C side bar interface with the contextual information and object-level control of the Generals UI. This allows players to easily control all production structures from anywhere on the map without the use of control groups, select and control any structure individually, purchase unit-level upgrades, and use tactical unit abilities..."

"While EALA admits that single-player is a huge focus of the game -- there are three factions; the third hasn't been announced yet -- Command & Conquer 3's multiplayer will allow infinite spectators to watch games on EALA's servers. Additionally, one of the spectators can assume a "Madden-like" role (their words, not ours), draw on the screen like it's a teleprompter, and with the game's VOIP support, call the play-by-play."

"With Command & Conquer 3 Tiberium Wars, Electronic Arts' Los Angeles studio will revisit and revitalize one of the most established and popular series in real-time strategy history. From the resource-gathering, base-building, and tank-rushing of the original game from 1995, the Command & Conquer name has come to mean fast-paced, brutal gameplay and memorable cinematic cutscenes starring such characters as actor Joe Kucan's Kane, who has been confirmed to return to the series..."

"GDI views Nod as a dangerous, virulent, and inexplicably self-sustaining terrorist group obsessed with accelerating the worst ecological catastrophe in history, led by a charismatic and brilliant sociopath named Kane. The Brotherhood sees itself quite differently. Nod believes that it is the agent of change for a world in the throes of transition to a new order, the representative of the poor and the oppressed, and a foil to the previously unchecked power of GDI..."

"The match we watched was set in a map called Nile Delta which is in the Yellow Zone. The color pallete is therefore blended over with plenty of yellow and brown tones to create a dustbowl meets the apocalypse type of feel. Mad Max would feel at home amongst destroyed civilian buildings and highways. The most colorful pieces of art on the screen were the Tiberium crystals and their sickly green glow. NOD was stark in their black and red attire while GDI donned their more militaristic standard beige and grey..."

"GDI started as a secret military alliance of G8 nations--a treaty organization formed to contain tiberium, reverse its spread, and fight the sinister Brotherhood of Nod, a terrorist organization that believed the otherworldly substance to be beneficial to mankind. Over time, power and sovereignty have been gradually ceded to GDI and the national identities of the participating countries have faded..."

"From a game design standpoint Tiberium is a simple and elegant resource that is easy to understand and use - but it has properties that designers can take advantage of to create fun game play with many layers of strategy. Tiberium fields are natural conflict points on the battlefield and control over the fields is an important part of game strategy. Direct use of the resource by some units allows for the introduction of new ways to play. The amount and distribution of Tiberium has a huge influence on the pace of the gameplay and the natural progression from early to middle and then late game in a multiplayer or skirmish match..."

"If you were to stand in the middle of a Red Zone, you would see a landscape straight out of hell. The ground is a blasted and barren plateau of rock laced with veins of Tiberium that shine through with a malevolent green radiance. On the horizon are massive formations of pure Tiberium that have welled up through the surrounding earth..."

"We saw one of the yellow zones first-hand in a short tutorial mission using the GDI forces. Near our military base, ruined streets of cracked asphalt threaded through the decimated shells of buildings. It had the feel of World War II post-bombing photographs. The broken shells of cars still sat eerily in parking spaces..."

"Verdu suggests that fans of the series can expect to see more references to classic C&C canon, as well as many, many references to the game's ongoing story buried in all layers of the game, from cinematic cutscenes to mission briefings to battle chatter you'll overhear between units. However, the demonstration we saw looked like nothing we've ever seen from C&C--a zoomed-in view of highly detailed units being deployed from the battle-worn confines of a forward desert base, complete with specular lighting effects intended to mimic the "whitewashed" sun-blindness resulting from sunlight reflecting from desert sands that was featured prominently in the George Clooney motion picture Three Kings..."

"After touring the area with some Orca craft, some Nod soldiers in a nearby abandoned city (which I suppose means it's not really abandoned) began firing from the relative safety of one of the buildings. The Orcas made quick work of one of the buildings, called in some help from a couple of Mammoth tanks (which have independently reactive treads to the environment by the way) which took out yet another building. Finally, because nobody wanted to be left out of the action, Firehawk jets flew in and bombed the crap out of two remaining buildings. All of the action generally served as a way to show off a bunch of the new particle effects that should make the game that much more interesting visually. Smoke and dust flew up in large clouds while sparks and fire flew off during explosions. We can only imagine what's in store for some of their bigger weapons..."

"We've been doing pre-production on the Tiberium universe for quite a while now - fleshing out the backstory for GDI and NOD, laying out the timeline for important events, chronicling the history of Kane, and documenting a million other details that give the game universe a high degree of realism and internal consistency. In fact, I've never seen this degree of universe development for a game before. We even brought in some MIT scientists to figure out the physics of Tiberium. They gave us a white paper suitable for publication in a journal that describes the atomic structure of Tiberium, how it transmutes matter, what kind of radiation it gives off, and how it might be used to power machinery and weapons. We have also worked hard to understand where it came from, why it's here, and what it means for the future of humanity..."